


trent oliver has depression: the musical

by nickybottom



Category: The Prom - Sklar/Beguelin/Martin
Genre: Character Study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-04
Updated: 2017-09-04
Packaged: 2018-12-23 17:04:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11994150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nickybottom/pseuds/nickybottom
Summary: this is all just me projecting onto trent because he mentions like twice that he feels like life is meaningless and I was like "lol same".





	trent oliver has depression: the musical

**Author's Note:**

> hey so this is the first fanfic I've written like EVER and I know trent is sort of ooc but considering his character is pretty much "I Am Theatre Man And I Am Pretentious As Shit Also Juilliard" I feel like I'm allowed a bit of wiggle room with him. please don't hate me.

Trent Oliver was...tired? Tired wasn’t quite the word for this feeling. Sad? Too nonspecific. Feeling a longing in his soul that told him he had to do something better than this, though he had no idea what to do, while simultaneously wanting to just give up on life and lay in his bed until he died? Well, yes, but there had to be an actual word for that.

Maybe “waiter” was the word for that.  
Trent Oliver was, at the moment, a waiter.  
Of course, it was only so he could afford to pay for his apartment until the Non-Equity Godspell tour started, but it was still the equivalent of hell.  
Especially when the entire Eleanor cast came in and somehow, he had worked with practically every single one of these people, and here he was now, getting them food.  
Especially when, moments after being told they were closing, Dee Dee decided it was “attack Trent’s life choices” time, and reminded him that his life was meaningless and worthless.  
(Which, of course, it was, but that wasn’t something he needed other people validating.)  
But then Angie showed up, and Barry decided to remind him his life was meaningless again. God, that was fun.

But then there was a kid in Indiana, and suddenly, there was a tiny bit of purpose to his life! A small reason to live! A lesbian in Indiana! He would even get Stephen Sondheim to write something (Steve absolutely loved his Sweeney Todd from the 2009 Off-Broadway revival) and he’d have a bunch of excited kids (well, some of them weren’t kids, but a large amount of the cast was below the age of 25) on the Godspell bus who get to meet actual Broadway stars, and everything was going to be good, for once!  
Until Angie threatened to murder everyone on the bus.  
And Stephen Sondheim turned out to not be a huge fan of his Sweeney Todd.  
And Dee Dee had, amazingly enough, upset an entire gym of people to the point where they were trying to push over the bus. And yet, she still had a dorky principal worshipping her. Who even had a Swallow the Moon bootleg. And who didn’t even notice that he had been in in the ensemble for Swallow the Moon!  
And then, of course, they somehow got kicked out of a monster truck arena. That was nice and validating of his songwriting skills. Absolutely.  
But they did get the kid a prom, and they did get to go out for drinks, and Principal Man (Hawkinson, maybe?) got to talk to Dee Dee, and she seemed somewhat into him.  
Until everything fell apart with the fake prom.  
Fuck, people were horrible.  
(There was a part of him that wanted to admit that they should have known it, that tonight couldn’t have belonged to them or to Emma or to anyone but the horrible people in Heaven, Indiana, and that this was their fault- Barry’s, Angie’s, Hawkins’s, Dee Dee’s, Sheldon’s, and his own- for not bothering to look into this further and for thinking that people could be good. But with Hawkins and Dee Dee arguing and Emma crying about her girlfriend betraying her, there wasn’t much room for his pessimism. Besides, he was supposed to be the pretentious one, not the “give up on humanity because it’s horrible” one.)

Häagen-Dazs helped, though. And the world was okay again, because German ice cream was good.  
But ice cream couldn’t help the Godspell tour getting cancelled because legitimately no one bought tickets, and ice cream couldn’t help him tell them that they were shut down and that they weren’t getting paid, and that they were legitimately stranded in Shithole, Indiana.  
Alcohol helped with that. Alcohol helped them all with that, and soon the Godspell Bus was a bunch of crushed young adults and jaded older adults getting drunk off their asses and singing songs from a Non-Equity tour that was never going to happen.  
But he couldn’t get drunk with them forever, and Barry dragged him to the store for more Häagen-Dazs and Dee Dee forced him to come and talk to Emma, and he dragged himself to talk to a bunch of kids about how he was great (if he could get a bunch of 17 year olds to believe that, then he could believe it eventually, right?) and how they could be less of assholes.  
(Somehow, he let himself ramble about actors and said something along the lines of “remind ourselves what it means to be human” and God, if that wasn’t something that was technically correct. He hadn’t felt “human” in months.)

So, somehow, him and a bunch of not drunk (at the moment) Godspell cast members convinced teenagers not to be homophobic. That was something. It was definitely a nice feeling. Vaguely validating of his purpose in life, maybe?  
And then Emma got her song famous (god, they were all so proud of her), and Marion went on Eddie Sharpe’s show (they were less proud of him, but Dee Dee seemed very happy when Marion started talking about how much Eddie sucked for leaving Dee Dee), and they were able to have a prom!  
And then there was a kick-ass prom in Heaven, Indiana, and Trent had a bunch of kids who thought he should be a teacher, and suddenly he had a purpose in life.

And then, everyone left.  
It was almost bittersweet. Barry, Angie, and Dee Dee had to get back to New York, and most of the Godspell cast was going with them. A couple of people wanted to stay in Heaven for a bit longer, so he still had the bus and a bit of the cast, but he was stuck here with a principal and two high schoolers. But they all had found something in Heaven, whether it was something to live for or someone to live for.  
But still. Principal and two high schoolers.  
And so he talked to the principal about acting, and life, and his feelings of worthlessness and meaninglessness.  
“Trent, have you ever considered that you might be...well...depressed?”  
“...what?”  
“Like, really. You sound like you have depression, Trent. I mean, you seem to hide it behind an aura of pretentiousness and acting like you’re fine, but you seem to be, well, sort of depressed. I mean, I’m not a professional, but I’ve suffered from depression for a while too, and you seem to feel pretty similar.”

Trent Oliver was an actor, a teacher, an ex-waiter, and was clinically depressed, according to a therapist and a doctor in Heaven, Indiana. But that crappy town had given him a tiny little something to live for in the form of a bunch of students who were actually interested in acting, a principal who actually noticed that Trent was in the ensemble of Swallow the Moon after having it pointed out to him, an ex-cheerleader who was constantly trying to get away from her mother, and a guitar player who he teamed up with to write songs sometimes. And, for the first time in a while (maybe not “not since Juilliard", but a while), Trent Oliver felt really, truly, okay.


End file.
